I’m working on a VST heavy song that stutters when I hit 70% CPU.
If I go into the Renoise preferences and change Latency from 15 ms to 30 ms, the problem goes away. Why?
I’m using an M-Audio Firewire Audiophile (booooo!)
A Latency of 30ms means 30ms of sound get (computed and) buffered before the first tone is played back. If the buffer is small, a spike in CPU use can easily lead to the buffer running out, and then you get stutter. If the buffer is bigger, a spike in CPU just makes the buffer run low just the same, but as long as it doesn’t run out it can “catch up” again when the CPU usage is lower and you won’t get stutter.
Thanks all. I appreciate it.
I have no idea. I run OS X on an iMac G5.
Rest assured my next sound card is not an M-Audio though…
EDIT: To be fair, it happens with the internal sound card too.
Edit: Argh…
Conner, the buffer issue will happen on any soundcard. I have a iMac G5 as my main comp, and a Windoze laptop. By making the buffer smaller you get better latency for playing “live”, but the processor has to work harder. With the larger buffer you get higher latency, but it gives the processor some breathing room. There is a point on ANY machine where you will start getting cut outs/stutters.
I do just fine with my old G5, but plan in a year or so to upgrade to an intel Mac. The more power will make the issue you speak of less of a problem. By the way, I just use the built in Mac core audio driver. Sometimes when I am playing via midi keyboard I set the buffer very low (6ms or so) and then when I have recorded what I need I kick it up higher for processing.
I don’t need a lot of ins and outs so I never saw a reason to get an external soundcard.
No matter what soundcard i’ve tried (don’t have that much money, so pretty much all of 'em have been pretty lousy 
) that problem has always occured when having low latency. But increasing the latency (almost) always help. 
Really glad about that ^^;;